Angeline huffed a laugh. “I can’t say I taught him how to do that very well.”
“You raised a good man.” One that occupied my thoughts, even when he shouldn’t.
Despite looking older, Angeline was centuries my junior. Though, in wisdom, she was my elder.
Immortality meant that my maturity had stopped developing past a certain year. Some joked my year was earlier than most. I couldn’t commit to being on time if I tried, and my sense of humor was juvenile at best.
“Yes, well…” she said before she sipped her wine. “He has a reason for concern. This time of year haunts all of us.”
“I am alright, really.”
The passing of the day that Ryn died always peeled back the scab and pushed intrusive questions into my head.
What if I hadn’t kept him at an emotional arm’s length for so long? We could have had nearly four hundred years together.
What if I’d never climbed up that amphitheater wall and distracted him? I might still have him.
Angeline did not look at me with pity. Instead, she leveled a serious gaze in my direction. “You lost your Source Match, Elsedora. It is okay to mourn. It is okay tonotbe alright.” Angeline’s tone was hard, but not condescending.
“We never…” I shook my head. “It was not like that. We loved each other as friends, but he was not my husband or betrothed.”
Because I had not let him be.
Though, if I assessed our time together more closely, Ryn had guarded his emotions, too.
Riddled with guilt over his involvement in his sister’s death, he’d never allowed himself anything that wasn’t still possible for her. Including love. Yet he’d admitted it that night after Krait had beaten him to a pulp for his dishonesty.
I’d been too afraid to say it back.
“Love comes in many forms—and no matter the form, it is still a tragedy to lose someone you care for. No one should ever have to endure it alone.”
My eyes welled, and I nodded. “I know, thank you. It’s so much easier to not think about it.”
The honest admission felt better than any lie I could placate her with.
She offered me a sad, watery smile. She mourned, too—for lost time with her son.
“Then shall we drink about it instead?” She held up her wine toward me. I leaned across the space between our chairs to clink my glass to hers.
“Gladly. That I can manage.”
I appreciated Angeline for not coddling me or coaxing more vulnerability out of me than I offered. She allowed me silence to sip my wine and stare blankly into the fire, and she did not comment when tears rolled down my cheeks.
There were so few times I let anyone see me cry aside from Emmerick. I never felt weak in front of either of them.
With the bottle drained, she crossed the room to grab her cloak.
“You get some rest,” she commanded.
“Let me walk you out.”
“Come over for breakfast tomorrow after you go visit my boy.”
“I wouldn’t miss that,” I admitted as we carried on into the hall of a thousand doors. The dim lamp-lit corridor stretched farther than the eye could see—its magic held strong even after centuries of neglect.
When we reached the fifty-fifth door on the right, Angeline gave me a quick hug.
She stepped into the Egress, and I commanded it for her. “To Luz Square.”
